bony fingers. It could be called the grasp of an iron skeleton. He wore a
blue smock-frock, much too short, which disclosed, and he was proud of
them, his sinewy hands, and the lower part of his arms, or rather bones
(the _radius_ and the _cubitus_ the reader will pardon the anatomical
designations), wrapped in a rough, blackened skin, and separated by some
hard and cord-like veins. When he placed his hands on a table, he seemed to
use a just metaphor of Pique-Vinaigre to play a game of cockles.

After having passed fifteen years of his life at the galleys for robbery
and attempt at murder, he had broken his ticket-of leave, and had been
taken in the act of murder and robbery. This last assassination had been
committed under circumstances of such ferocity, that, taking into account
he was a robber, this bandit looked upon himself, with good reason, as
already condemned to death. The influence which the living Skeleton
exercised over the other prisoners by his strength and his perversity, had
caused him to be chosen by the director of the prison provost of the
dormitory; that is to say, he was charged with the government of his ward,
as far as regarded the order, arrangements, and neatness of the room and
beds. He acquitted himself perfectly of these functions; and never had the
prisoners dared to fail in the duties of which he had the superintendence.
Strange and significant. The most intelligent directors of prisons, after
having tried to invest with the functions of which we speak the prisoners
who most recommended themselves by their good conduct, or whose crimes were
less grave, had found themselves obliged to deviate in their choice,
however logical and moral, and seek for provosts among prisoners the most
corrupted, the most feared: these alone could exercise any influence over
their companions.

Thus, let us repeat it again, the more a culprit shows audacity and
impudence, the more he will be regarded, and, thus to speak, respected.